战略管理研究：40年纵览

Strategic Management Research:Focusing on the Determinants of Performance

《外国经济与管理》创刊40周年之际,也是当代国际主流的战略管理研究社区创立40年的里程碑时刻。回顾过去,瞻望未来,以企业经营绩效为基准和行文主线,本文力求较为详尽地回顾战略管理学领域的演进历程和研究风貌,聚焦于考察其研究专题,兼及相关的理论视角和研究方法。本文首先探讨战略管理领域的使命、核心问题以及边界划定,然后分别梳理和总结不同的因素对于企业绩效这一终极因变量的影响。这些因素包括企业的外部环境、企业的自身特点、高管团队的构成与动态、企业战略管理的方式与过程以及企业战略的内容与形态。虽然战略管理研究取得了巨大的成就,但由于其问题导向的学科特质和发展历程相对较短,它与较为成熟的所谓范式性的学科状态依然相去甚远。它的包容性和开放性将会不断吸引新的学者进入。无论是研究专题还是研究方法,都将会有进一步的细分与融合。这也是未来研究者贡献的机会所在。

Since the publication of "Strategic Management: A New View of Business Policy and Planning" in 1979, it has been some 40 years for the research conducted in the field now known as Strategic Management, with great scholarly accomplishments achieved and major challenges lying ahead. As this milestone year also represents the 40 th anniversary of this journal, a major outlet for Strategic Management research in China, it will be fitting to provide a more systematic and up-to-date review of the critical literature and conjecture on the future advancement of this field. This paper will offer such a review building on one central premise, which is the fundamental question regarding the most central and critical dependent variable of strategy research, i.e., what factors determine firm performance?We subsequently review in turn the various categories of determinants of firm performance as featured in the literature, ranging from the Environment, the Firm, to the CEO and the Top Management Team(TMT), as well as the Strategy Process and Strategy Content. The examination of the effect of environment on firm performance includes the characteristics of the task environment, the structure of the industry, and its trend of changes and patterns of turbulences. The review of the Firm effect concerns the basic attributes of the firm, its resource endowment and capability repertoire, as well as its organizational system that includes organizational structure, control, and culture, as well as power and politics. The review of CEO/TMT centers on the attributes of the CEO and TMT members, the composition, dynamics, and the succession of the TMT, and the managerial discretion of the CEO/TMT.Then we focus on how the different factors collectively and individually affect firm performance.We first review the line of research under the broad concern "How much does industry differ?" and systematically compare and contrast extant results regarding the effects, respectively, of industry,strategic group, corporate parent, and business unit. We also review research studies on the dichotomy of economic determinants of firm performance and organizational determinants, and further examine the fit between firm factors and environmental factors. Next, we examine studies on the effects of strategic decision-making process, e.g., the comprehensiveness of the strategy-making process, and effects of strategic change, on firm performance. For the effects of strategy content on firm performance, we differentiate between market strategy and nonmarket strategy that includes corporate political strategy and corporate social responsibility. For the market strategy, we examine both corporate strategy and business strategy, and both competitive strategy and cooperative strategy, including strategic alliance and coopetition, as well as new concepts and phenomena such as business model innovation, ecosystem strategy, and platform strategy.Finally, we summarize the different theoretical perspectives as well as the host of research methodologies used in strategy research that originate from economics, psychology, sociology, and other areas of the management discipline, and conjecture the future development of the field with its further differentiation and integration regarding its research topics and methodologies.